4 Local Variables for Dired Directories

This Dired-X feature is obsolete as of Emacs 24.1. The standard Emacs
directory local variables mechanism (see Directory
Variables in The Gnu Emacs manual) replaces it. For an example of
the new mechanisms, see Omitting Variables.

When Dired visits a directory, it looks for a file whose name is the
value of variable dired-local-variables-file (default: .dired).
If such a file is found, Dired will temporarily insert it into the Dired
buffer and run hack-local-variables.

into a file called .dired in a directory then when that directory is
viewed it will be

sorted by date

omitted automatically

You can set dired-local-variables-file to nil to suppress this.
The value of dired-enable-local-variables controls if and how these
local variables are read. This variable exists so that it may override the
default value of enable-local-variables.

Please see the GNU Emacs Manual to learn more about local variables.
See Local Variables in
Files in The GNU Emacs Manual.

The following variables affect Dired Local Variables

dired-local-variables-file

Default: ".dired"

If non-nil, file name for local variables for Dired. If Dired finds a
file with that name in the current directory, it will temporarily insert it
into the Dired buffer and run hack-local-variables.

dired-enable-local-variables

Default: t

Controls the use of local-variables lists in Dired. This variable
temporarily overrides the value of enable-local-variables when
the Dired Local Variables are hacked. It takes the same values as that
variable. A value of nil means to ignore any Dired Local Variables.